


so lucky, so strong, so proud

by ProfessorSpork



Category: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Awkward Conversations, Canonical Character Death, Catharsis, Character Study, Closure, Coping, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Jewish Peter Parker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 21:05:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18374084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProfessorSpork/pseuds/ProfessorSpork
Summary: Gwen jumps, and when she turns around, Peter B. Parker is standing awkwardly in the bedroom doorway. It’s been a long time since anyone managed to sneak up on Gwen, but all she feels is that she’s surrounded by Peter—no wonder her spider-senses didn’t warn her. “Hey. Um. Sorry, I’m—totally snooping.”“It’s okay,” Peter shrugs, slouching against the door frame. “It’s not my stuff.”He’s got a point.-(Or: Sometimes you end up in a superhero team up where half the people in the group have your face, or your dead ex/best friend’s face, and you just have to find a way to deal with it.Gwen, Peter, and the others do their best.)





	so lucky, so strong, so proud

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't quite get this out in time for the DVD release like I'd hoped, but I've been working on it like literally since I saw the movie in theaters for the first time, so I'm very happy to finally send it out into the world.
> 
> Beta'd by the incomparable theseerasures; title and epigraph from "Hear You Me" by Jimmy Eat World.

_So what would you think of me now_  
_So lucky, so strong, so proud?_  
_I never said thank you for that_  
_Now I'll never have a chance_

 _And if you were with me tonight_  
_I'd sing to you just one more time_  
_A song for a heart so big,  
God wouldn't let it live _

* * *

When Gwen crashes down in an alternate dimension’s Times Square and sees someone called _Spider-Man_ fighting crime on the news, her first thought is _oh, I guess I’m a dude in this universe._

Without any leads on how to get back home, cell signal her phone knows how to read, or cash for food, she figures information is her best bet and swings to Bryant Park to use the computers at the library. It’s bizarre: there are bear statues at the entrance where she expects lions to be, half the buildings are the wrong color brick, and apparently _Netscape_ is still the browser of choice in this dimension. Given all of that—and considering the fact that that Gwen’s concept of her own gender tends to vacillate wildly between a fierce defense of womanhood on principle and a vague feeling of _Do I have to?_ depending on the day—the idea that George and Helen Stacy’s oldest child might identify as Glen and not Gwen is cake to accept in comparison. She looks her dad up first, thinking that will be the easiest way to find out if his kids have done anything newsworthy.

Turns out, she’d been half right: there isn’t a Gwen Stacy in this universe.

Or at least… not anymore.

(Nothing like wearing the face of a dead girl to emphasize the need to keep a low profile.)

She doesn’t have the self-control to stop herself from looking up Peter. When she finds a few photos attributed to him on the Daily Bugle website from the last few months, the relief is indescribable. He’s alive. Alive, and thriving, and _not a lizard_. She’s seen enough science fiction movies to know that trying to meet him would be nothing but trouble and heartache, though, so she relegates him to the back of her mind. Tries to be content in the knowledge that he’s been spared her karma in this universe, at least. Besides, she’s got bigger things to worry about: namely, figuring out how on earth she got here in the first place, and how the heck she’s going to get back.

Her instincts take her to Visions Academy, where she meets Miles. And—she thinks she’s doing pretty well, all things considered. Granted, _Gwanda_ is not her finest moment, she should have come up with an actual alias before it became an issue, but… still. Progress.  She’s figuring it out. Her hair will grow back eventually.

And then, on the TV: Peter Parker, Spider-Man, found dead. The Peter on the news has _her_ blond hair, _her_ blue eyes, and apparently, the same exact terrible fucking luck as her own Peter.

She wants to throw up. She wants to put her fist through a wall, wants to cry and scream, wants to tumble off the George Washington Bridge and fall and keep falling.

Instead, she glitches, which essentially feels like all of those things at once.

* * *

May starts getting well-wishers almost immediately.

She hasn’t slept; not since she got the call that night. Apparently, MJ had been listening to the police scanner—she often did when Peter was out late, just to have an idea of where he was. Only instead she’d heard that they’d found a man unresponsive in a Spider-Man suit, and she’d immediately gone to the station to ID the body, and…

And then she’d called May, and the cops had called the press.

At first it’s the neighbors, coming over with casseroles and booze. Most of them had known, or at least suspected—you don’t go ten years of seeing Spider-Man on your quiet, semi-suburban block without getting an inkling of why he’s there. But they check in briefly and then respect her need for space; they visit and then they leave.

The fans, on the other hand…

May knows they mean well. Most of them ignore her entirely, actually, treating the house like it’s some sort of memorial, leaving keepsakes and candles at the sidewalk and then leaving again. But some want to stay and talk; feel the need to tell her what her nephew meant to them, to the world. People get weirdly confessional over the deaths of strangers they saw as heroes, and May supposes they see her as some kind of conduit. From her ears to Peter’s restless soul.

So when yet another stranger in yet another derivative outfit comes to her door, she thinks he’s a cosplayer at first. May’s seen it all: Steampunk Spider-Man, skimpy Spider-themed lingerie, flag-colored Spider-Men at Pride. She even saw a ‘Bojack _Spider_ man’ once. So the hulking figure in the gray trench coat on her lawn doesn’t really register as all that weird.

Except then he takes off his mask, and it’s Peter. Not _her_ Peter, but a funhouse mirror distortion—one with jet black hair, dark, haunted circles under his eyes, and an uncanny monochrome pallor. Like’s he’s been desaturated, all the colors in the world sucked right out of him. She’s never seen anything like it.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he says, “but I sure hope you recognize me, because I didn’t know where else to go.”

Against all reason, she finds herself smirking. “You think I don’t know my own nephew? I’m not _that_ old, Peter.” Her sarcasm draws a surprised chuckle out of him, and then the most heartbreakingly peculiar look on his face—like he’d forgotten what his own laughter sounded like. “What are we talking here? Clone? Weird astral projection? Double from an alternate universe?”

“My friend said it’s something like that.”

“Your… friend?”

“I—maybe you should just meet them yourself,” he says, before turning away. “It’s okay, you can come on out!” he calls over his shoulder, and three figures emerge from where they must have been crouched behind some parked cars—a young girl, a massive mecha, and… there’s no other way to describe him: a cartoon pig.

“I’m Peni,” says the girl, immediately offering out her hand. May shakes it, feeling distinctly like she’s losing control of the situation and possibly also her mind. “And this is SP//dr.”

“Nice to meet you, Peni. And… Spider,” she says, offering her hand in turn to the pig—

—who laughs. “Oh, no, the robot’s SP//dr. I’m Peter Porker! Pleased to meet’cha.”

May takes that in.

“Well, Peter always was a bit of a ham,” she says, and the pig _beams_ at her.

The interdimensional refugees keep her busy enough that she almost forgets she has places she needs to be. A funeral to attend. A text from MJ snaps her out of it—she’s got to get to Manhattan; the city is waiting on her if they’re all going to mourn Spider-Man properly.

May doesn’t have time to mourn. She has too much work to do.

* * *

He hadn’t been looking for Miles, is the thing. If anyone ever asks, then yeah, Peter will say his spider-sense led him to the churchyard, but…

Honestly, he was there to lay a rock on Spider-Man’s headstone and say Kaddish. The idea of mourning himself is weird, but the idea of some other, super goyische Peter getting buried at a literal _cathedral_ without anyone observing any of the rituals is even weirder. It gives him the heebie jeebies. Almost—almost like—

Well. Like someone stepped on his grave, is the expression. He never took that one for literal before. 

Meeting Miles is… the kid’s something else. Good intentions radiate off of him like waves—Peter swears he can see it with his spider-sense. Kindness on the visible spectrum.

It’s actually _fun,_ running the Alchemax mission with him. Stressful, sure, but… it’s freewheeling and chaotic in a way that feels genuinely thrilling and not just like another day courting death. And it’s kind of nice, actually, to hear himself narrating his own methods, his instincts, the things that make Spider-Man go. He hadn’t realized he knew so much. It’s been a long time since Peter’s felt like an expert in anything but failure.

And sure, it’s far from perfect. But it wouldn’t be a day in the life of Spider-Man if it didn’t feel at least a little like it’s populated entirely by members of the Island of Misfit Toys. Or at least, that’s what he thinks until he and Miles are rescued by something akin to perfection in a black and white suit.

And then the new Spider-whoever de-masks, and it’s a face Peter B. Parker hasn’t seen in twenty fucking years.

“Gwanda?!” Miles yelps.

“It’s—”

_Gwen._

“—Gwen, actually.”

Something inside of him falls – pulls taught – and _snaps._

His mouth says: “Oh, you know her? Very cool.” Because—

Because it is cool. Gwen’s the coolest. Everyone should know Gwen Stacy. They should be so lucky.

It’s just hard to do that when she’s dead and she’s _been_ dead for two decades because, y’know, he killed her that one time. (He can still hear it; still dreams about it—Gwen screaming, and screaming, the whoosh of the air, and then a _twang_ , a soft, horrible _pop_ , and Gwen… not screaming anymore.)

They’re web-slinging away now, Gwen and Miles snarking at each other, and they’re just—they’re just kids, they’re so young and so _alive—_

He can’t remember the last time he felt like that. Hell. He can’t remember the last time he _remembered_ feeling like that. Miles’ little speech from the air vents comes back to him, all at once— _I can’t sit there and just let Spider-Man die without doing anything about it. I’m not_ _doing_ _that again._

Well.

The Gwen Stacy Peter B. Parker knew had loved science and her father and giving Peter shit, in basically that order. She was unfailingly kind, quick as a damn whip, and the kind of beautiful that’s not supposed to exist outside of storybooks. She’d had a meticulously-curated ten year life plan that culminated in getting her doctorate in medical engineering so she could save the fucking world. She hadn’t had a stud on her eyebrow, but she _had_ had a gap between her front teeth and the uncanny ability to be better at him at literally everything—multiversal Gwen Stacy traits, apparently. He’d loved her so much he could’ve burst with it… and because of a stupid, repulsive, _unbearable_ mistake, he’d had the wasted privilege of growing into the man he’s become, while she’d stayed eighteen forever.

He isn’t going to let anything in this dimension _touch_ this Gwen. Not a fist, not a blade, not a wall, not a web.

He’s not doing that again.

* * *

Gwen says she’ll keep him posted about the whole friendship thing, and Miles knows he should leave it there, he shouldn’t push his luck, but… he has so many _questions._ And no offense, but Gwen seems way more competent than hobo-Peter, who is still snoring behind them. Plus… he sort of just wants an excuse to keep talking to her.

“Can I ask you something?” he asks. Gwen opens her mouth, expression playful, and he cuts her off before she can make fun of him. “Yes, okay, something _else.”_

“Go for it.”

“Does anyone know you’re Spider-…?” he trails off, tripping over the fact that he still wants to say _Spider-Man._

“Woman,” she reminds him with a chuckle.

“Spider-Woman. Have you told anyone? Because Peter—uh. My Peter, the one that—well. He told me not to tell _anyone,_ he said it wasn’t safe and that Kingpin had people in his pocket everywhere. But like. Mrs. Watson-Parker—MJ, I mean—she gave this speech, at his funeral, so clearly _she_ knew, so I’m just wondering… if…?”

Gwen shakes her head. “No one. Well. Peter, but… obviously that didn’t work out.”

Against his better judgment, he keeps pressing. “Don’t your parents ever get suspicious?” he asks, and watches as Gwen curls in on herself, like she’s taken a slow-motion punch to the gut.

“My dad basically hates Spidey for a living, so you could say I’m highly motivated.”

“What is he, a supervillain?”

“A cop,” she grimaces.

“Oh, no way! Mine too!” Miles exclaims, before clearing his throat and trying to at least _appear_ more chill. Maybe not something to be psyched they share. “And yeah, I get what you mean… my dad’s never been too hot on Spider-Man.”

Gwen stares out the window, watching the trees of the Hudson Valley rush by. “Yeah, well. Mine put out a warrant for Spider-Woman’s arrest.”

He winces. “Yeesh. Why? What did you do? Other than, y’know. Be a vigilante.”

She bares her teeth at him—a bitter, feral grin. “Didn’t you hear?” Her voice is dripping in irony and self-loathing. “I killed Peter Parker.”

Oh, god.

His instinct is to reach out—to hug her, to put a hand on her shoulder—but he holds himself back. She must notice the aborted movement in his hand, though, because she gives him a tired smile.

“It’s—it’s okay. Spiders aren’t exactly pack animals, Miles. It’s better that we go it alone.”

He wants to disagree with her, but he doesn’t have the words. For now, he decides to let it go.

* * *

(Gwen wonders, briefly, if her world has a Miles Morales. And then it occurs to her that the answer might be _yes, and he died, because you didn’t save him,_ and she makes herself stop wondering.)

* * *

When May Parker opens her door, there are three people standing on her lawn: one stranger, and two ghosts. The first a decade too old; the second painfully, impossibly young.

She drops the bat she’d been hiding behind her back.

She’s still getting used to the fact that Peter is dead. Even with the well-intentioned harassment, the memorials, the crazy cast of characters she’s hiding in her basement… it’s still an adjustment. Something she has to remind herself of. This new Peter, so similar to her own—in living color, no less—rocks her back on her feet.

But Gwen… she’s been gone for almost nine years, now. May remembers everything about the night Gwen Stacy died—the horrifying coverage on the news, the way it felt like her heart had bottomed out and gone through the floor. Peter had come home sobbing, inconsolable, and confessed that he was Spider-Man to May between panic attacks. And everything had changed.

“I’m not ready for this,” the new Peter breathes, and—he may be older than she’s ever seen him, but god, he’s still her _kid._

In the end, they’re all just kids.

“Follow me,” she says.

* * *

After Miles bolts, they all somehow end up in May Parker’s kitchen, sitting around the table as May putters about making hot chocolate from scratch. While Peni examines May’s small TV with a kind of fascinated horror—it’s old enough that it still has its own internal VHS player—the Peters idly discuss a battle plan. And Gwen… Gwen watches May.

She’s always found a certain kind of peace in watching May Parker exist in the world. She feels a pang at how rarely she’s visited her own universe’s Aunt May lately—between being Spider-Woman and school and the Mary Janes and the crushing weight of her own guilt, she’s barely made time to stop by the Parker house anymore. Watching this May pull ingredients from cabinets and turn raw materials into something nourishing is… grounding. When Gwen Stacy looks at May Parker’s hands—hands that have assisted in building third grade science fair projects and goobers alike, hands that have sewn back together torn clothing and torn skin—she thinks of spiders, spinning webs. How there’s something heroic in it, this biological imperative to create and mend.

May hands Gwen a mug of cocoa, and Gwen is unsurprised to see a sprinkle of cinnamon and nutmeg at the top. Exactly the way Gwen loves it most.

She doesn’t have to ask how May knows.

For a minute or two, Gwen allows herself the dubious luxury of dissociating while she drinks her damn hot chocolate, the conversation in the room muting into an incomprehensible drone as she hovers somewhere outside herself, beyond it all. When she tunes back in, they’re discussing Miles—whether he’ll come back, whether he’ll be ready in time to be of any help to them. Against her will, her fears from before come rushing back, her mind’s eye filled with the specter of an infinite number of Miles’ blood on her hands.

“I’m going to bed,” she announces mechanically, pushing herself away from the table with a _screech_ of wood against linoleum.

May takes her abrupt departure in stride. “You and Peni can go ahead and sleep in the guest bedroom; the boys will take Peter’s room. You know where it is?”

“Sure,” Gwen says.

And she does. But her feet take her past the guest room and up the familiar path to Peter’s bedroom all the same.

The feeling, when she steps inside, is acutely bizarre. Some things are exactly as she knows them to be in her dimension—the scattered hand-built trinkets and gadgets that cover the dresser, the poster of Einstein sticking his tongue out on the wall, the Ninja Turtles bed spread—but others are unfamiliar, giving her an eerie sense of uncanny, half-baked déjà vu. Her Peter only ever shot digital; he couldn’t afford anything else. This Peter’s room is filled with vintage cameras, made long before he was born. The trophies on the shelf aren’t for the debate team, but for robotics competitions. The Uncle Ben she sees in pictures strewn around the room seems to have perfect vision, whereas the man she’d known all too briefly had worn thick, coke-bottle glasses. She suddenly feels sick with an emotion she cannot name, a sharp pang of longing, regret, possessiveness, affection.

It _hurts._

On top of the desk is a magazine—a scientific journal set down face-first, left open; Peter’s careless method for saving his place. Gwen picks it up, her curiosity getting the better of her. Needing to know what article this Peter left unfinished.

To her surprise, it’s a profile on Olivia Octavius and her work with Alchemax. The last sentence on the page reads _Octavius is pushing the boundaries of what we know of the multiverse, her inspiration the notion that_

—and then it stops. The rest of the thought hidden, wrapped around the page turn.

And even though this isn’t Gwen’s dimension, this isn’t her Peter and isn’t her Doc Ock, she finds tears in her eyes for them all. For the fact that this Peter will never know what Octavius’s inspiration is, because somewhere between his reading the subject and the predicate, he was murdered. Ripped out of the world as easily as Gwen might rip a page from the magazine.

She needs to get out of here.

She turns on her heel, vision blurred, but only manages to stumble two steps before her face in the mirror gives her pause.

Not—not her reflection. Her _face._ Gwen’s face, _another_ Gwen’s face, in a photograph tucked in between the frame and the glass. She wipes at her eyes and walks forward, pulled like a magnet until she can gently dislodge it from its perch.

This Peter’s Gwen had been brown-eyed and brown-haired, which… she guesses only makes sense, in some cosmic kind of way. She’s older, too; it’s strange to see the angles of her cheekbones, the cut of her own jaw like that. A preview of things to come. In the photo—clearly one Peter took and developed himself, because there’s a fingerprint-shaped smudge that got weirdly exposed at one corner—Gwen is posing dorkily outside Oscorp, lab coat on, ID badge proudly affixed to her lapel. Smiling for the camera like it’s the first day of kindergarten, probably because Peter insisted. She can practically hear him— _I’m proud of you! Let me be proud of you! Oh my god, smile like a normal person for two seconds! There. Was that so hard?_

Her hands shaking, she puts the picture back where she found it as gently as she can. She knows she should go to bed, walk away from this graveyard of things she never let herself have, but… somehow instead she finds herself standing in front of his closet, running her fingers across the soft flannel of the shirts still hanging there. Wondering if she’d still be able to smell him if she were to bury her nose in the fabric. Wondering if he’d smell the same as her Peter, even if she could.

“Hey, I—oh. Hi.”

She jumps, and when she turns around, Peter B. Parker is standing awkwardly in the doorway. It’s been a long time since anyone managed to sneak up on Gwen, but all she feels is that she’s surrounded by Peter—no wonder her spider-senses didn’t warn her. “Hey. Um. Sorry, I’m—totally snooping.”

“It’s okay,” Peter shrugs, slouching against the door frame. “It’s not my stuff.”

He’s got a point.

For a second, they stand there in awkward silence, staring at each other.

Peter breaks first.

“So… how’s your… dad?”

She winces. “Listen, can we not? The small talk, the pretending like we know each other. I’d really rather just… skip it.”

“That’s fair,” he concedes—but he’s already opening his mouth to keep talking, so Gwen doesn’t know why she bothered. “But, uh, while I have you. I just wanted to say—what you said, to Miles? About how Spider-Man always gets back up? I think… I think I really needed to hear that. So thank you.”

“Sure,” she shrugs.

He nods at that, then—finally, jeez—makes for the door to give her some space.

… and then he turns back around.

“No, sorry, I gotta say it. I—listen. I haven’t done, like… a lot? Of therapy? But it’s probably not great that I keep thinking about her when I look at you and we should maybe talk about it.”

Gwen rolls her eyes. “Or I can put my mask back on and we can forget it.”

“Hey, come on. I mean…” He scrubs at his face. “I think maybe we could both get some closure here. Rip off the band-aid or say goodbye or whatever.” His nervous tics are so familiar to her—the way he keeps cracking his knuckles, picking at his fingernails where they meet the cuticles. “Aren’t there… things you’d wanna say to your Peter, if you could?”

She opens her mouth, but the words die in her throat.

He seems to take it in stride.

“Alright, I’m the adult, I’ll go first.” He steps forward, then—after a moment of hesitation and the slightest nod from her—puts both hands on her shoulders, their weight anchoring her down firmly. Life lines. “Gwen Stacy, you’re a marvel. I loved the crap outta you, and I’m so, so sorry I didn’t get to you in time.” Though his voice had started out strong, it’s rasping by the end, and oh god, she doesn’t want to watch grown up broken down Peter cry. “I’m so sorry, Gwen. It was my fault. My responsibility. The world is _so much better_ with you in it.”

She doesn’t know what to say. He’s looking at her like this is everything to him, and she doesn’t have a clue what to do. “I—thank you. I guess.”

He gives her a lopsided grin, letting her go. “You wanna try? It’s cathartic, I promise.”

“I’ll pass.”

“Because it won’t make me him, or because you don’t think you deserve it?” he presses—then immediately snaps his jaw shut, surprised at his own audacity. She can’t hide how she flinches.

“Wow, dude.”

“Sorry.”

“You don’t get to—we’re not _friends._ You can’t just say shit like that.”

“I know. I know that. But I’m kind of the designated driver, here, and—“

Gwen misses the end of the sentence. She’d pay attention, but she’s a little distracted by the way a thousand white-hot needles are piercing under her skin, her world spinning out as every atom inside her decides it would rather be two inches to the left—no, upside down—no, inside out—and she swallows down a scream into lungs that don’t exist as she crashes to her knees.

Every glitch is a little more violent than the last… and Gwen’s been in this dimension a week longer than anyone else.

She’s not sure how many more she can take.

“Gwen?! Gwen, Jesus—”

The seizing ends. She gives herself a moment to just tremble on the floor, allowing her body to rediscover stillness on its own time. When she forces her eyes open, Peter is hovering worriedly above her, offering a hand to help her up. She ignores it, climbing back to her feet under her own power.

“That looked like a rough one,” he murmurs.

“I’ve handled worse.”

He rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “I know you have. You give off pretty strong ‘tough cookie’ vibes, y’know.”

“Yeah, _that’s_ my schtick.”

She can’t handle the way he’s looking at her—all soft and fond and amused. Like he really _knows_ her. She bristles at it. It doesn’t mean anything; he’s not her Peter, she’s not his Gwen. He clocks the way she angles herself away with him, frowning.

“Is it cuz I’m old?” he asks gently. “I get it, I’m—freaking ancient, compared to him. That must be hard to…” He shakes his head. “It must just suck.”

“No offense, but pretty much all of this sucks.”

He seems to take that in stride. “I dunno. When I first got here, I couldn’t wait to get back to my own dimension, even though I’d made a real fuckin’ mess of it. I just wanted to fall back inside my shitty life. But even though things are—this dimension is _weird,_ and it’s terrifying, and I don’t know what’s gonna happen tomorrow. Probably nothing good. But I’ve also… I’ve never gotten to share this with anybody before. Not really. So even if I have to stay behind with the goober, even if I die here… I’m kind of glad I came. You know?”

The cavalier way he says _even if I die here_ puts a lump in her throat. Sure, he may not be her Peter, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t—that she wouldn’t care if he—

“Don’t say that,” she whispers.

He blinks, then smiles. “That I’m glad I came?”

 _Ugh._ “You’re a dick.”

He huffs out a laugh at that, then throws himself into the rolling desk chair, spinning himself a few feet across the room. Gwen watches as he notes all the same things that caught her eye—the cameras, the trophies, the unfamiliar Ben. With hesitant fingers, he scoops up a half-scrapped old web shooter off the floor, its mechanical innards exposed.

He’s pointedly studying the gears, not looking at her, when the question comes: “What was he like? Your Peter.”

(She hates to admit it, but it’s the right thing to ask.

The shitty thing about having a dead best friend—aside from the overwhelmingly obvious—is that you don’t get to talk about them anymore. Every day, Gwen sees something that reminds her of Peter. Every day, someone says something, or makes a joke, and she feels the same pull to bring him up that she did when he was alive: _Oh, my friend Peter owns that camera. Actually, if you want great banh mi, you should try the place on 7_ _th_ _; it’s Peter’s favorite. You_ _liked_ _that movie?! Peter and I hated it, how—?_ And then, because it’s the polite thing, the person will follow up about him, and Gwen has to say _well he died_ and suddenly everyone’s tripping over themselves with condolences and apologies when she never fucking wanted their sympathy. She’d just wanted to talk about him, because death hadn’t made him any less important to her. And no one seems to get that part.)

“He was—caustic,” she answers immediately, then winces at the way it sounds. “But like—not mean-spirited, not nasty. Just sharp. Sarcastic as hell, but really, really funny. Annoyingly tall. And so smart, and so… _just._ He wanted things to be fair. For everyone. He made the worst puns in the world and the best grilled cheese in Queens. He loved May. He loved… me. I think.”

She’s not sure when Peter stood up again, but somehow his hands are back on her shoulders. “He’s Peter Parker. Of course he did.”

“You don’t—”

“I do know. For a fact.” His voice leaves no room for argument. “Gwen… I’m no good at this stuff, but. Whatever you need to say—it’s okay. You should say it.”

She decides to believe him.

Tentatively—so, so slowly—she reaches up, cupping his cheeks in her hands. Caresses his temples with her thumbs. If she presses and then pulls, just the slightest bit, the crow’s feet and laugh lines around his eyes disappear. Her hands hide the gray in his hair from view. And— _oh, there he is._ With his big brown sea glass irises, his face that’s all angles. Her eyes burn at the sight of him, two years of repressed guilt and pain spilling over.

“Peter—I—”

She’s crying too hard to get anything else out.

Peter crushes her to him in a hug, mumbling soothing nonsense as she buries her face in his chest. A lot of it sounds like _it’s okay_ and  _I forgive you_ and it’s so dumb, it’s _not real_ , but that doesn’t mean she needs to hear it any less. She sobs into the spider insignia on his uniform and bunches the fabric of his stupid thrift store jacket in her fists and cries her fucking eyes out. She lets herself be held.

“I’ve got you, Gwen,” Peter whispers, and she’s pretty sure he’s crying too, which just makes her cry harder. “I’ve got you. M’not letting go, I’ve got you this time.”

(And then there’s that. The part where, for some reason, it never works out between the two of them. So many dimensions, so many Gwens, so many Peters, and _none_ of them get to be together. And the one thing that stays the same is it’s not her fault—it’s his. Bad science. She’s always fought her memories on this, never accepted that she hit as hard as she did in self-defense, that the Lizard was… was honestly trying to kill her. But it looks like it’s as close to a sure thing as the multiverse allows that Peter Parker miscalculates, and goes too far, and kills Gwen Stacy. That’s how the story always goes. And yet somehow, here she is. Still standing. And she just… she can’t figure out _why._ )

“I m-miss you so _much_ …” she hiccups, and he squeezes her harder, lifting her up off the floor the slightest bit because of their height difference.

“Me too. I miss you, too. So much.”

Slowly but surely, she gets a hold of herself, the sobs slowing to sniffles as he rubs gentle circles on her back. She feels ridiculous, but more than that, she feels—

She thinks she feels _better._

That’s a new one.

“Sorry I just, like, completely lost my shit all over you,” she mumbles into his chest.

“Don’t worry about it. This suit is practically breakdown-proof after all I’ve done in it. Have enough panic attacks in the costume and you learn how to make lycra snot-resistant.”

Gwen is startled to find herself giggling. “Dude, that’s _so gross—_ ”

“Hello? Who’s—oh. I… didn’t mean to intrude,” comes a voice from the doorway. The _other_ other Peter; Noir. “Ham crashed out on the couch, and May and I just tucked Peni in.”

Peter lets her go to hold an arm out, inviting Noir into their hug. “You want in on this, big guy?”

Noir holds his hat in his hands, nervously rotating it around and around. It’s—adorably bashful, if Gwen’s being honest. “I don’t, erm…”

“C’mooooooon,” Peter teases, wiggling his fingers, and Noir timidly steps in and puts his arms around them. It’s awkward, and stiff, until suddenly it isn’t as he relaxes into them. His gloved hands tangle into Gwen’s hair—or, sigh, what’s left of it—and for several long moments, they do nothing but breathe each other in.

Later, when Gwen finally slips under the covers of the bed in the guest room, Peni automatically moves to cuddle against her in her sleep, drawn to Gwen’s body heat. At first, Gwen goes rigid—every nerve on edge, as though her body has already reached its capacity for human contact and can’t take even one more second.

And then Peni sighs, and does this cute little snuffle thing, and all of Gwen’s muscles release their tension as one. She takes a deep breath and stares up at the ceiling, where she’s unsurprised to find an elaborate spider web in the corner—the spider Peni’s psychically linked to, Gwen assumes, having made itself its own bed for the evening.

She thinks about the ending of _Charlotte’s Web,_ when Charlotte’s dozens and dozens of itty bitty spider children hatch and then immediately abandon Wilbur to ride the wind for places unknown. How the air had filled with them, balloons of spider silk, arachnid aeronauts catching  a warm draft. How Wilbur had despaired, only to find that three of Charlotte’s daughters had chosen to stay behind. Just because they liked the place. Just because they liked him.

He’d trembled so hard with joy that that’s what one of the spiders named herself. Joy.

When Gwen finally drifts off, she dreams of spiders taking to the air. A family.

(And if there’s somehow one less shirt hanging in Peter’s closet than there was yesterday, well. She doesn’t think May will miss it.)

* * *

When Peter B. wakes up the next morning in his childhood bedroom, for the longest time, he thinks he’s still dreaming. Part of that is because he has to trip over a grayscale version of himself sleeping on the floor to reach his socks (well, _Peter’s_ socks, anyway), and then his hands glitch through them when he tries to put them on.

Most of that is because when he comes downstairs, Aunt May is making breakfast.

And he _knows_ this isn’t his world. But even though there’s snow outside and the wallpaper in this house is all wrong and there wasn’t a mezuzah on the door, he’s still slammed backwards to a thousand mornings like this one. May in the kitchen, the Mets game on the radio, the smell of home.

Gwen was one thing. Life like his, he’s been rehearsing what he might say to Gwen if she showed up on his doorstep for a long, long time. But May… that one wasn’t his fault, and there was nothing he could’ve done about it. All he could do was watch as she wasted away, fading one day at a time until there wasn’t enough left of her to keep going.

Fucking cancer.

There isn’t a goober for cancer.

(He knows. He tried.)

“You just gonna stand there all day watching me, or are you going to help?” May asks, a familiar amused sharpness in her voice, and Peter snaps to attention. Walks forward mechanically and accepts the spatula she shoves in his hands to stir the eggs.

“Sorry,” he mutters.

“It’s alright, I know you’re useless until we get a few gallons of coffee into you,” she teases. Then her face falls. “Or. Not _you,_ but…”

He knows the feeling.

 _Just rip off the band-aid,_ he reminds himself. He can do this. He can be healthy talks-about-his-feelings guy just a little bit longer. If he could do it for a few fucked-up teenagers, he can do it for May.

He isn’t sure what’s going to come out of his mouth until he says it.

“It’s okay,” he shrugs. “It doesn’t have to be weird. Where I’m from, you’re dead, too.”

She blinks at him. Then, drolly: “Well, shit.”

He can’t help it; he bursts out laughing. And then she’s laughing, and they’re making breakfast, and it really _is_ just like any other morning.

It’s funny. He’s dreamed about this so many times. Bargained for it, begged for it. What he wouldn’t give, for just one more day with her. Not to make any big confession, not even for closure. Just to be able to bask in her presence a little bit longer, to appreciate her for all that she was, all that she made him. Normal and safe and loved.

They don’t say anything else. They don’t have to. But every once in a while, as they move around each other, she’ll squeeze his hand or his shoulder just that much tighter than is necessary, and he knows she’s on exactly the same page.

“You never could make toast without burning it,” she chuckles, when she sees the mess he’s made.

It’s true. He never could.

She winks at him as she eats the charred bits without complaint.

* * *

_“Get up, Spider-Man!”_

Spider-Man gets up.

* * *

It’s two months before Miles meets MJ.

He doesn’t even realize who she is, at first. He’s just swung past Borough Hall and through MetroTech on his usual Brooklyn rounds on a miserable night full of wind and freezing rain when he sees a woman lose control of her umbrella. It blows right into the oncoming traffic on Flatbush Avenue, and the woman lurches after it, like she’s going to somehow snatch the umbrella off the road without getting hit by all the crazy Manhattan Bridge commuters. Swinging into a dive, Miles manages to web up the umbrella and pull it out of the street with one hand while grabbing her with his free arm, yanking them both out of harm’s way.

“Is an umbrella worth your life?!” he yelps when both of their feet are back on solid ground, forgetting to use his deeper Spider-Man voice in his panic.

“I was trying to stop a five car pile-up! I didn’t want anyone swerving to avoid the umbrella; I wasn’t thinking—” she explains, sounding more frustrated with herself than the situation, and it’s only then that he gets a good look at her face.

“Mrs. Watson-Parker,” he breathes, the words showing as little puffs of steam outside the mask in the cold.

She tilts her head at him, smiling in a bemused sort of way. “Hi, Spider-Man.”

“I didn’t—I mean I wasn’t—” He doesn’t know what he’s even trying to say. Realizing he’s still clutching her umbrella, he holds it out to her; between the web fluid and the now-bent arms, it looks like the world’s saddest bouquet. “Here.”

“Thanks,” she laughs, taking it, then shivers a little bit.

“Do you want me to walk you to the train?” he offers. He has no idea where she’s going, but he feels like he can’t just leave Peter Parker’s wife in the street with a busted umbrella.

“You know what? I think I’d rather hang out with my favorite superhero, if he’s got the time,” she says, flashing him a grin. The moment stretches; soft.

There’s then a horrifying full fifteen seconds of silence before Miles realizes she meant _him._

“Oh! Sure.”

She laughs. “C’mon, let’s get out of this weather.”

Without another word, she walks back up the street to the nearby Starbucks; unsure of what else to do, Miles trots after her. The blast of warm air when they enter is welcome, even if they get a few looks from the baristas on duty.

“Want anything?” she asks, and Miles freezes.

“I—uh—” He doesn’t like showing even parts of his face in public. There’ve been nights where a nice food truck owner or busboy would call him down from a rooftop and give him a freebie, which is always really kind of people, but… it’s one thing in a dark alleyway and another thing in a well-lit Starbucks in downtown Brooklyn.

MJ rolls her eyes at herself. “Of course; don’t worry about it. Why don’t you find us a table?” she suggests, before drifting towards the counter.

The Starbucks is empty except for them and the people who work there, but Miles still picks the corner booth in the most secluded part of the store. She joins him a few minutes later, sliding a cup of something hot into his hands.

“I know you can’t drink it, but I thought it would be nice just to hold something warm? Peter always said on nights like this his fingers would go numb; it drove him crazy.”

Miles accepts the drink gratefully. “That’s really nice of you, Mrs.—”

“Please, call me MJ.”

“Mrs. Watson-Parker,” he finishes, trying to seem cool and definitive and adult about it. It’s a question of respect—his parents raised him a certain way, and it’s not a reflex he he’s sure he can get rid of. It’s not one he thinks he _wants_ to. “So what were you doing in Brooklyn?”

“I was at the 84th precinct; they needed me to sign some paperwork.”

“Oh, that makes sense.”

More quiet. Miles cringes at his own glaring inability to make small talk. It’s normally easy, in costume—people like chatting with Spidey. But here… Luckily, MJ rescues him by throwing out a topic.

“I’ve been wanting to apologize to you,” MJ says.

…That was not the topic he expected; his hands jerk in some reflexive _‘no, of course not!’_ gesticulation that has him scrambling not to spill the drink she got him all over her. “What? Why?”

“I feel like… you’ve deserved more from me, than what I’ve been giving so far,” she explains slowly, feeling it out as she says it. “I know you’ve been learning so much from May, and I—I want to be that for you too. I want to be a resource for you, M—Spider-Man. I want to lift you up.”

Miles shakes his head vigorously. “You’ve been missing Peter, I don’t—of course I get that. I’ve never needed anything from you but your blessing. What you said at the funeral—that we’re all Spider-Man—that meant a lot to me. Like you were giving me permission to do this. That’s—that’s more than enough. You not being mad at me is all I really needed, you know?”

She reaches out; grips one of his gloved hands in both of hers. “I could never be mad at you for doing what you do. Spider-Man never belonged to me; Spider-Man never even belonged to Peter. Spider-Man belongs to New York, and you’ve been doing _such_ a great job.” She smiles, self-deprecating. “Even saving helpless damsels from their own umbrellas.”

Miles feels himself grinning back; he thinks if anyone can read his face through his mask, it’s gotta be her. “I don’t think you’ve ever been helpless in your life, Mrs. Watson-Parker.”

That gets a chuckle out of her. “I wish that were true, but thanks for saying it.”

Miles has more he wants to say, but a sudden feeling of _something’s wrong_ washes over him—shoulders tense, fists clenching. A shout, a crunch of metal. Four blocks—no, five. Danger. He’s gotta _go._

MJ sees the change in him immediately. “It’s fine, get out of here,” she says, even as he’s already clambering out of his chair and making for the exit. As they get through the door, she adds, “Get my number from May, okay? Call me whenever. I’ll be looking forward to it.”

“Are you sure you—?”

“Just go already!” she laughs, shooing him.

He gives a furtive glance left and right. Seeing no one in the immediate vicinity, he lifts up his mask around his nose and chugs the drink she got him—hot chocolate. It warms him immediately from the inside out.

He webs up and gives her a quick salute as he swings off: “Get home safe, Mrs. W-P! I’ll text you!”

She watches him until he disappears into the rain.

“Go get ‘em, Tiger.”


End file.
